Hello,
I started a PhD in computing a couple of weeks ago, but am not really sure what I'm supposed to be doing!

What are other peoples experience of their first few weeks? What did you work on and how did you know what to look at? Or did you just spend the first few weeks settling in, finding your way around?

O

Comeon Pal I still dont know what i am doing after 1.5 years and 2 six months breaks. I will recommend to be strict and choose a final topic asap many supervisors deny that to keep them in safe grounds but for your own benefit do it as logically as you can.

I spent most of my first two weeks either drunk or hungover.

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Hi when I started, I was already at the university for a year so I can't say much about settling in, but definitely you'll spend the first few weeks getting used to the new surroundings. I spent a good few weeks just reading articles and reviews when I started and discussing the start of the project with my supervisor.

People will also be more than happy to help you with getting around the building and accessing facilities. I'm about 6 months into my project and I'm still finding my way in labs, so I wouldn't worry about trying to settle in quickly.

P.S. I find this website helpful: http://www.vitae.ac.uk/researchers/1229/Settling%20in.html

And I did not even know where my room was as it took 3 months by my research group to allocate funds and after all that wait i got a shittest computer in the whole world ...believe me a 15inch CRT monitor. The cats in my dep got more fatter....

Hey Owenrog. I don't know much about computing, I'm in psychology, but I think the general experience of starting off is probably pretty similar! The first week or so was pretty much just settling in, meeting the rest of the team and getting set up my office really. Then I went through my project proposal in detail and read/re-read all of the references from it and made summary notes on each of them. I also followed up references from these articles that looked useful. I spent about the first 6 months reading around the subject, making alterations to the original proposal based on the literature I had read, finalising the research questions and how I was going to address them. This resulted in a final proposal and a literature review which were submitted for my 6 month review. To some extent it depends on how specific your project proposal was- some people find they can get going with the research straight away, for others it takes the best part of the first year to sort out what the plan of action is. One thing I would say is that you should meet regularly with your supervisor and together you should set goals for your next meeting- that way you keep a sense of direction and your supervisor is up to date on your progress. And chat to the other people on the team or other PhD students around you if there are some- the other PhD-ers under the same supervisor as me offered me loads of advice, from how not to piss our supervisor off to where to recruit participants from to who to speak to about finances etc, so make the most of your resources! Good luck with it all, KB

Thanks guys - this is really top advice!
Good liuck with your work!